I currently work at Taipei American School coaching debate and public speaking. I have previously coached the Spanish National Team for WSDC, and have been heavily involved with training of the National Team for HK, and Mexico before Spain. My favorite style of debate is British Parliamentary, but I will be sure to check that bias when judging other styles of debate.

When judging PF or LD I expect that you will follow the NSDA rules when it comes to evidence. Please do not willfully misrepresent the evidence. When judging any round I find procedural tricks, K, and theory fairly unconvincing. If you are deciding not to debate the motion you had better have an exceptionally good reasons to do so. A poorly articulated argument or assertion will not win you any favors. If you are hoping that one dropped argument is going to win you my ballot, you will likely be disappointed. Depth of arguments, impacts, and comparatives will get you much further. Weigh your arguments against those of your opponents and tell me how I should judge the debate. If reasonable, this will likely bode well for you.

I am by no means an expert on judging PF or LD. I am apt at following speeches that are quick, but please do not spread like this is a policy debate. I prefer well articulated arguments than sprinting through a speech in order to put as many arguments of the table as you can. You can send your disclosure to me at cookm@tas.edu.tw

Follow tournament best practices. For online tournaments, turn your camera on!

Clear refutations are key to winning the debate. Speed-talking and arrogance are frowned upon. Debates should be consistent from construction to final focus, ideally while supporting a clear framework. Use sign-posts throughout to avoid dropped contentions. Solid evidence should clearly link contentions to impacts. Be civil.

I am willing to be convinced by either side. I take notes but I am definitely a lay judge. Speak to me and be respectful to each other. Please speak at a normal speed and do not mumble. I am a little hard of hearing so I would prefer that speak clearly and project your voice. Good luck!

Have fun in your round and be confident in yourself. Respect your team mate and the other team throughout the round including during cross. You can be firm and aggressive, but it should be respectful. Speed is not an issue as long as you speak clearly. Articulate the impact and showcase how you understand the arguments you are making, be consistent, and indicate why your impacts outweigh.

Rounds are meant to be fun and you should go for any argument you feel comfortable defending, that being said it is your job to tell me the link at every level. Don't assume that I'll make the link, show me your work and tell me how you access your impacts. Be kind to your opponents, you can be assertive and strong in cross, but it doesn't mean you have to be rude. Jargon is ok but you better understand what you are saying and how it applies to a case, don't just say weighing or scope if you can't show me what those things actually mean. I can be fairly expressive in rounds, don't read into my non-verbal reactions!

Background

I competed for Taipei American School in Congress and am a current sophomore at UC Berkeley.

I made it to the outrounds at several national circuit tournaments like Blake, Stanford and UK, and have also competed in Round Robins. 2x NSDA Taiwan Congress Champion.

Email: patrickclin@berkeley.edu

Paradigm

Adopted from my coaches (Chase Williams and Luke Tillitski)

You can ask me specific questions if you have them...but my paradigm is pretty simple - answer these three questions in the round - and answer them better than your opponent, and you're going to win my ballot:

1. Where am I voting?

2. How can I vote for you there?

3. Why am I voting there and not somewhere else?

I'm not going to do work for you. Don't try to go for everything. Make sure you weigh. Both sides are going to be winning some sort of argument - you're going to need to tell me why what you're winning is more important and enough to win my ballot.

Congress Specific:

Don’t try to “adapt” to me as a judge because I see value in all styles of Congress. The best part about Congress is that there are a myriad of ways to be successful in the event. I can appreciate all speaking and argumentation styles - just give the best speech in the round. I do not care if you speak early, mid-round, or late.

You have to give the speech that is appropriate for when you are speaking in order to get me to rank you. By this, I mean that if you give a constructive speech when you should be crystallizing or give an authorship that doesn't sufficiently explain the legislation and the main impetus for the legislation's creation, then I will not rank you. Adaptation is the name of the game in Congress.

Name-dropping a bunch of people and half-way refuting their claim is not nearly as impressive to me as picking the most strategic argument and thoroughly refuting it (i.e. show why the warrant is untrue instead of just saying "X said this bill decreases jobs. Well, here's a statistic that says it increases jobs!)

Presentation vs. argumentation balance: Congress is a debate event. This means that I will prefer competitors with the best arguments. Speaking/rhetoric is a tie-breaker between students with arguments of equal quality. Obviously, if your presentation is so poor that it detracts from your argumentation then I cannot credit you for that argumentation.

I don’t mind if you have an untraditional speech structure as long as it is easy to follow.

POs: I see the value in presiding, as I know it is necessary for the event to function. Thus, if the PO does a solid job, then I am likely to rank them.

Email: contact@ubitaiwan.org

I participated in four years of policy debate in high school and I debated four years at Western Kentucky University.

I am open to anything and I try to be as tab as possible. Just use warrants in your argumentation, even if it is theory. If an argument has absolutely no warrant and is just a claim, there is a chance I still won't vote on it even if it is 100% conceded. That is to say, if you just say conditionality is bad because of fairness and education, that is a series of claims without warrants, and thus is unpersuasive even if the other team doesn't address it. However, if a poorly warranted claim goes conceded, then I will not necessarily adjudicate the strength of the warrant as it is the other team's obligation to defeat this warrant, and as such I will take the warrant as true unless it is unintelligible or utterly absurd. I will default as a policymaker if you don't put me in a competing paradigm.

When adjudicating competing claims, it is my hope that debaters will engage in evidence comparison. However, if two contradictory claims are made, and no one weighs the strength of the internal warrants of the evidence, then I will likely call for the evidence to adjudicate which claim is more strongly warranted (assuming the argument may be part of my reason for decision). Same goes with topicality. I am 50/50 in voting for topicality, and I default competing interpretations.

If you are running critical/performance arguments, please be familiar with the argument and able to intellectually defend it. My personal preference when I debate is usually policy-oriented discussions and my personal bias is that switch-side policy debate is good, but I don't let this inform my decision in the round. At the same time, I think that non-traditional forms of debate are an important component of the community and have an important message to broadcast, and as such, I have voted for performance affs in the past.

The following is a preference and not a requirement. It is common for me to judge teams running non-traditional forms of arguments and personally be unfamiliar with the literature base. Thus, it is probably in your interest to ask if I'm familiar with a non-traditional argument prior to the round unless you plan to explain it extensively in the round. An argument is inherently less persuasive when the messenger also does not fully understand it, and the debate is probably less educational for everyone involved as a result. In general, I think you should be familiar with any argument you read before you deploy it in-round, but I've found this is more frequently an issue when high school debaters deploy the critical literature base. If I don't think you are familiar with your argument, I won't hold it against you in my RFD (although it will inform my speaker points), but it will probably influence whether you are able to effectively deploy the argument on the flow, where I will vote.

Finally, you should tell me explicitly how the RFD should be written if you win so I can understand your vision of the round. If you do not have ballot directing language, I will use my own judgment to write the RFD, so it is in your interest to write the RFD for me.

Sept/Oct 2024 topic note: Please do not use the terms "illegal immigrants," "illegal aliens," "illegals," or any other disrespectful term or slur to refer to people who cross into the US without documentation. Please use the term "undocumented immigrants." If you are quoting directly from a source that uses a different term, I will be more lenient about this (though I also think that in these cases, it is acceptable to change the wording of the original source). If you repeatedly or intentionally do this, I will dock speaker points.

It is absolutely crucial that your stats are up to date. Please do not read out-of-date stats on border crossings or unemployment.

I did 3 years of PF (mostly local, some national), 4 years of APDA/BP (IONA), and have worked part- or full-time as a PF and novice CX coach for the past 3 years in DC and Taiwan. I have the most experience/comfort with judging PF and parliamentary formats.

You can contact me and add me to the email chain using this email: maya.rubin56@gmail.com.

General things applicable to all formats:

• I am very sensitive -- as I hope most judges are -- to the exploitation of inequities between teams. Particularly in evidence-based or more technical formats, do not do things like run theory on novices because you know they won't understand theory or use language on an ESL team that you can reasonably predict will be inaccessible to them. Similarly, in all formats, please be extremely cognizant of the way you discuss and characterize countries or groups to which you do not belong, particularly countries in the global south and marginalized groups.
• Be respectful to your opponents. When in doubt, err on the side of being overly so. Do not call your opponents stupid in your speech, yell at or berate or repeatedly interrupt your opponents in crossfire/cross-ex, or be rude to your opponents before/after the round.
• Be respectful to your judges. If I judge you on a panel with lay/inexperienced judges, even if they are in the minority, please speak in a way that is accessible to all judges even if you don't think you need to win a lay judge's ballot to win the round. Also, do not postround me even if you think my decision was unfair: this will not change my mind and not accepting or attempting to understand my opinion will only inhibit your ability to win my ballot in the future.
• Off time roadmaps. I do not know why debaters use these, 99% of the time they are unnecessary. Unless you are doing something very wonky -- "my first argument, then their third, then framework, then my second" -- it is completely unnecessary and irritating, so please do not do it. If you are following anything close to a normal structure, please just signpost well during your speech and assume I can keep up.
• Timing and finishing sentences. I will time you but I suggest you time yourselves. If you continue speaking after your time has elapsed, I will knock on the table. You may finish your sentence (or crossfire/cross-ex answer) if time runs out mid-sentence, but please do not abuse this. Often when the time runs out, I hear the longest run-on sentence I've ever heard in my life. Just finish up what you were saying and sit down. WS: I will knock once at the start and end of protected time, 3+ times when the speech is over.
• Weighing. In absence of in-round weighing, I use a utilitarian framework and prioritize the arguments that were warranted/mechanized best. I think this is the consensus among debaters of how weighing should work absent a clear in-round framework. However, I'm extremely receptive to non-utilitarian frameworks and weighing if offered by the debaters in any format.

Public Forum:

I believe that Public Forum debate, like any format, is what you make of it -- which is to say, as long as it's not inaccessible to your opponents, I am fine with pretty much any argument you want to run (except for counterplans, which are explicitly forbidden in PF rules). I do not believe my personal preferences or beliefs about the format should influence how you and your opponent want to debate. I view my role as the judge to be the neutral arbiter of whatever debaters put in front of me.

I am not familiar with the cutting edge of PF theory. That said, feel free to run it if you want, but make sure to fully and carefully explain the theory and how it should affect my ballot. And, as mentioned previously, do not run theory or other progressive arguments on teams to whom they are inaccessible.

Tech > truth. It is your responsibility to call your opponents on evidence abuse. That said, I'm aware that evidence abuse is rampant in PF, so please do your best to hold each other accountable. When in doubt I follow NSDA evidence guidelines.

Go as fast as you want as long as it is accessible to your opponents, but be clear. I am fine with any speed.

No new responses past 2nd rebuttal/1st summary. Admittedly I am sometimes bad at throwing out new stuff, so if there's something important that is new in your opponent's case, it's a good idea to say so during your speech rather than just assuming I'll throw it out on my own.

Offense is sticky, defense is not.

I listen to crossfire and will occasionally write things down, but I consider crossfire non-binding unless something is brought up during a speech.

World Schools:

I probably undervalue style in comparison to many worlds judges, so you should prioritize coherent argumentation over style and rhetoric.

Mechanisms are always more persuasive to me than examples, and I will not drop a properly mechanized argument simply because it has no real-world examples. Basically, I don't think saying an argument has no examples is by itself a persuasive rebuttal.

Truth > tech. Do not blatantly lie because you think the opponent won't catch it. If something is obviously factually untrue, I will probably throw it out. Same goes for poorly mechanized arguments -- I will usually not evaluate a massive impact if you never mechanize how you access that impact and merely assert that something happens.

For teams newer to WS: procedural slips like a second speaker neglecting to make an offensive argument will likely count against that individual speaker's points, but won't factor into the overall decision if the team wins on the flow.

CX/LD:

If I'm judging you in CX or LD, it's probably not a very good tournament or the tournament organizers were really desperate. I am not very familiar with these formats. If you are unlucky enough to have me as a judge, please treat me as a lay/relatively inexperienced judge. That said, unlike many lay judges, I don't have a preference against Ks, theory, etc if that's what you want to run, just make sure to explain them very clearly.

I will do my best to keep up, but please explain anything that wouldn't be intuitive to someone who's familiar very broadly with debate conventions but not the specifics or literature of progressive debate.

Hi debaters. Please note the following

- assume I don’t know the subject

- respect opponents, judges, and your teammate

- show me you understand the subject well and convince me of your position (pro or con)

- speak clearly, pls do not speak too fast.

- work as a team

1. What is your debate background?

- Debated in in-school debate competitions (middle school)

- 2004 IASAS Original Oratory contestant for Taipei American School

- HSNU English Debate Coach 2015-2018

- CKHS English Debate Coach 2017

- Taoyuan Wuling Senior High School English Debate Coach 2018-2020

- Yan-Ping Senior High School English Debate Coach 2020-2021, 2024

- Taiwan High School English Debate Regionals/Nationals Judge 2018-current

- Co-founder of Education Legion education team

2. How do you judge?

I am deliberate on the overall presentation of debaters. My basis for evaluating evidence strength is the OCEBM (Oxford Classification of Evidence-Based Medicine). In other words, expert opinions and case reports do not sway me unless there is a specific and necessary reason to mentioning such kind of evidence, or is coupled with other stronger pieces of evidence. Failure to do so would make me more critical about the presented evidence that the debater(s) strives to put into use to tie into their assertions or claims.

Link your logic together and do not scatter like a shotgun shooting its pellets from long-distance. It is your responsibility to engage not only with your audience but also the judge(s). A messy beginning and unclear crossfires/cross-examinations make it hard to delineate or see what is going on from one or both sides, which means every part of the debate counts.

Do not bring up new arguments during the summary/final focus (PF) or rebuttals (CX). New evidence is allowed, but at this point it would be kind of late to do it.

3. Please explain other specifics of your judging style.

Even though I have no problem keeping up, I am not a fan of spreading. The purpose of debate is communication, not word blasting. If you abuse your education advantages that give you better language mastery and/or preparation time, to pummel less privileged teams, it will impact negatively on your speaker points and the outcome if it interferes with the debate.

Sportsmanship and basic mutual respect must be adhered.

Kritik should be used only when necessary.

Counterplans are fun as long as they are clear.

If you have diffculty understanding points 2 and 3, here is an EFL-friendly version below:

>>>How I Judge

I focus on how well you present and explain your arguments. For evidence, I use the Oxford Classification of Evidence-Based Medicine (OCEBM). This means I give more weight to solid, well-researched evidence (like studies and data) and less weight to opinions or stories, unless they are supported by stronger evidence. Make sure to explain why your evidence matters.

Your logic should be easy to follow, and your arguments should be connected clearly. If your speech is confusing or your cross-examinations are unclear, it makes it harder to judge your points fairly. Don’t introduce new arguments at the very end of the debate (during Final Focus or Rebuttals), but you can bring in new evidence if necessary.

>>>Other Judging Preferences

Speak clearly and at a reasonable pace. If you speak too fast or try to fit in too much information (often called “spreading”), it can make your arguments harder to understand, especially for teams that may not have the same language skills. This will negatively affect your speaker points and the overall round outcome.

Respect between teams is very important. Bad behavior or disrespect will lower your points.

Counterplans (alternative solutions) are welcome if they are clear and well-explained. Kritiks (critical arguments about the debate structure) should only be used when they are really important to the topic.

I hope this helps make things clear for everyone. Cheers!

legal background

Participated in debate in middle school.

Judge on overall presentation

uses cross-fire / cross examination to determine mastery of topic/subject

clarity of argument at final speeches is paramount

(i am a lay judge, less spreading)

Debates should have a clear and consistent framework from construction to final focus. Refrain from speed talking, as your contentions and refutations should be clear and coherent. Strong and relevant evidence should clearly link contentions to impact. Creative thinking is a bonus. Take a deep breath and have fun!